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BRITAIN'S UNDERWORLD FROM THE SPIVS TO THE KRAYS
Was post-war Britain a villains’ paradise? Britain in the forties and fifties is often recalled as a golden age. Now a new book by Cardiff University expert Professor Donald Thomas, chronicles an underworld of escalating crime from 1945-1970. The launch of Villains’ Paradise will be held, by invitation, in the University’s Arts and Social Studies Library. Professor Thomas, Personal Chair in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, will also donate a selection of his personal archive of research papers, used in writing his series of acclaimed books on the Underworld in Victorian and WWII eras to the University’s Special Collections and Archives. In his book, Professor Thomas reveals that amongst the ex-servicemen and deserters (nearly 20,000) returning to Britain many had acquired skills and weapons that made turning to crime an easy option. At a time when Britain’s exports had nose-dived and the country was still suffering acute rationing, anxiety about armed robberies and psychopaths spread. The criminal of the future was prototyped by Ronnie Briggs and the Great Train Robbery, and Britain became the world leader in one thing, safe cracking. Among the incidents in Wales, revealed in the book: War surplus looting: Two South Wales entrepreneurs and the Royal Ordnance Depot at Barry were the means of robbing the Ministry of Supply of a fortune in ex-US Army consumer goods from the ministry’s base in Worcestershire. As one soldier admitted, everyone on the camp was "at it"
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